mordorbund

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Everything posted by mordorbund

  1. My family had cherry and lemon meringue pies to commemorate the occasion.
  2. 1) I’m not a news junkie so I genuinely don’t know, has something happened recently to bring this back to the limelight? I thought the Uyghur issue cycled through 3 years ago. Was he also asked about his stance on Tibet? 2) When I first heard the term I was shocked that media so brazenly used the racist word. But then again I’m not running for public office. 3) Give us the 75 instead of the 25 and we’ll roll our eyes and say, “what a maroon”.
  3. I think the lesson for the storyteller here folds right into the next part of the story. From a utilitarian perspective he should find a niche that is unfilled. He can move on to a different area, or he can try working parallel to the original starfisher, or perhaps try talking to the starfisher for direction. No, I guess she really wasn't making a difference. But if she's commanded to throw starfish in the sea then she better do it. Yes. I would also argue that he is succeeding with his primary goal of making a difference, even if he isn't the one getting the credit and it isn't playing out according to his plan. He did a test and saw that there is a measurable difference between when he tries and when he doesn't. Just because he doesn't know the causal mechanism doesn't mean it's not actually there and effective. The closest corollary I've found in my life is the value of "just being there". There is little foreseeable utility to it and yet it is tremendously needed.
  4. If you suck on them first they'll swell after they're tied and make it even harder to untie them.
  5. Children often want to do "big boy" things but are still developing the necessary skills to see it through. It's a balance for adults to let them struggle for the long-term success vs doing it for them and expediting the short-term. In this case I think I would have finished what he started and eaten the shoe strings.
  6. My youngest woke me in the morning and handed me an Oreo cookie with a bite out of it… and the cream filling licked out.
  7. I would say that's an inaccurate summary of my posts in this thread. Perhaps I'm not communicating clearly enough. @JohnsonJonesCould you summarize my main points without trying to rebut them. I want to make sure we understand each other. Once you do that I'll try to summarize your main points witout rebuttal.
  8. Plus I gave it a trophy. Can't go back now.
  9. You've made the claim that the Church retained ownership of lands allotted through consecration and even reclaimed them after the nominal owner apostatized. I have a reliable document that says the actual deed was given and the Church would not be able to do that. Additionally, when I did research on this I saw real, legally-binding deeds signed over and given out. The evidence I've seen looks like what you're describing was not practiced. But you claim it again. So I'm thinking the claim must be coming from somewhere. Maybe Bishop Partridge didn't follow the revelations initially and this was done for a limited time. Or maybe the practice was more wide-spread in the pioneer era and I just haven't come across it yet. I've done some research on my own and I'm not seeing what you've claimed. I ask you for sources so I can learn more about this practice. So far, I'm not seeing what you are and I'm starting to think that you've read into the documents something that isn't there. I've re-read the portion you quoted and I still don't see how the land was granted out but ownership retained by the Church. That first year the land wasn't granted out (except on a limited basis to Church leadership). The second year Brigham Young himself gave receipts along with land allotments and later signed into law that these surveyed lands could be bought, sold, exchanged and so on because the owners actually owned them. Can you show me in the paragraph you've quoted where it says the Church owned the land that it deeded out? I don't know how I'm supposed to assume this isn't about me since I'm the only one pushing back on your narrative right now (and I've admitted my relative youth). I have a difficult time believing what actually happened if what actually happened was never recorded and left no evidence behind. If you want to discuss the similarities and differences between the United Orders and Communism we can work our way to that. Right now I'm narrowly focused on the Church keeping land it deeded out.
  10. Not yet. I'll look it up later.
  11. Any DnD-based film faces an uphill battle so long as Dark Dungeons remains in the public conscience.
  12. The article doesn't say anything about Brigham's death and the challenges that ensued. It does say that these parcels were surveyed within a month of Young's quote about not buying land and only allotting what a person can reasonably farm. Only a year after that he seems to have changed his position because Brigham Young and Heber Kimball were meting out 1 1/4 acre lots by September of 1848, with larger allotments to follow (up to 10 acres). "Each man's receipt for his land became his deed for the purpose of maintaining his claim and conveyance of the land in the future." They didn't give out proper deeds because the Federal govenment's land system didn't include this new frontier. Brigham was installing a temporary system that could easily be grandfathered in when the Federal system caught up. It looks more like the first year was a survival year where very little land was issued so there's little room for claiming that the land was deeded then taken back. In the years following, the allotment receipts were treated like deeds, and the Provisional government (and then the Territorial government) of 1850-onward allowed for the Surveyor General to issue "certificates ... considered proof of legal possession for 'the amount of land therein described.'" And these certificates could be sold or transferred. "[T]he inhabitants of said City, . . . shall have power ... in all actions whatsoever, to purchase, receive, and hold property, real and personal, in said City; ... to sell, lease, convey, or dispose of property, real and personal, for the benefit of said City; to improve and protect such property, and to do all other things in relation thereto, as natural persons." The Church/government retained rights over the water and timber as a natural monopoly. Rather than conjure up a civics course I'll point out that even in this instance, these are not deeded over by the Church then reclaimed. This is shifting away from our core discussion of whether or not the Church retains ownership even when deeding property, but I want to point out that your link isn't the strong source you seem to think it is. Were all United Orders still Religious Communism when "not all ... functioned the same way"? Were these different Orders similar enough that they still qualified? Perhaps a better term may be Religious Co-op since "members contributed to a common fund [and] received capital stock". In some cases membership was "extended ... to regular citizens". I may have been too young during the cold war, but is that how Communism operated? My fellow factory workers could gather with our majority shares and say "We've produced a glut of shirt buttons, let's hold off until textiles have caught up. There is a need for belt buckles though. Let's retool for that." Is that how it operated? Even if they didn't have that much control, did they at least receive periodic stock payouts like in the United Order? Or was that yet another case of "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us"?
  13. Okay, then print sources please. You've written 16 paragraphs with only one citation. If one of your students turned this in how would you grade it? The citation you did include had the following (emphasis original): This is the crux of the matter!! Members consecrated their property to the Church, the Church then gave them a stewardship. This stewardship was a deed, which means if they left the Church they still owned the stewardship land. As for the Brigham Young period, your own source points out that the properties in question were not deeded to any particular saint and so was not a case of the Church reclaiming land deeded to a saint under consecration. The best you can claim is Brigham found a loophole by not handing out stewardships. I think if you look at other Utah settlements you'll see that the Salt Lake City practice was not the norm. For all you've written you still haven't made a compelling case that the Church reclaimed land deeded to saints as a consecrated stewardship.
  14. The post just reminded me of the Amelia Bedilia author’s entry, which had some made up info, which was referenced but not cited by a major paper, which was then used as a citation to bolster the made up claim. We can streamline the process by having Chat edit wikis with its false citations, get published and then re-edit the wiki with the newly-published article as a source.
  15. I’ve got a friend who’s an Econ professor. He had ChatGPT write an essay in response to one of his standard essay questions. He then had the students correct the response as an assignment. That seems like a fair way of acknowledging that students will want to use the AI while letting them know in practical terms that they’ll still have to put in some work. @JohnsonJones you’ve been in the business long enough to remember when Wikipedia came on the scene. There’s some comparability here.
  16. Won’t be long before ChatGPT starts editing Wikipedia for us.
  17. You mentioned this in another thread and I replied with links to various land deeded to individual saints that would have been legally binding. Many others on this site also provided references from the scriptures to show that what you’re describing is not the way the Lord directed it. Again, I’ll ask for citations. Do you have any references I can look up that shows the Church reclaiming land that was already deeded to a saint under consecration?
  18. I recently watched a video on “unplanned childlessness”. Only 5% of women in early child-bearing years say they don’t want children but far more than that actually never do. I need to read the book and check the numbers, but the claim is that women believe they can get a degree, build a career, seek a husband, and have children once they’re established. The reality is there’s a window of opportunity for having babies and the body doesn’t always wait for a career (and that’s assuming you beat out the women 5 years younger in attracting a mate).
  19. Springboarding here. Ideally, what is the proper punishment? Attaching a fine suggests a systemic rather than a personal failure led to the death. That being the case, what system failed here? - The retired police staff? If so, is the incentive for the retired police to head to the station and set the house in order? Pensions don't make sense. - The tax-payers? $19M comes to about $3K per resident of Clear Creek County. If they were directly assessed they would feel the sting of the fine but I doubt they will be. If they were assessed, or payed it as a lump sum, then it would incentivize them to take some action, but what would that action be? Recall the sherriff? Vote directly on police policy? - The PD? They had a budget of $5.7M in 2020. I'm guessing this is where the fine is actually going, and it will impact their budget for a decade or more. This would seem to have the desired incentives provided the cost isn't already masked through some sort of insurance.
  20. Yes, words have meaning. What condition did the murderous farmer meet to merit rain on his crops? I would say that’s unconditional. Elder Nelson prefers the term universal, but I would say it’s universal because it is without conditions. If we create a formal love theology around this talk then we can formalize using universal in lieu of unconditional, but in casual conversation and discussions the two are synonyms. By all means, remind the saints that there’s more to God’s love than just the unconditional but don’t go overboard and deny that it even exists.
  21. There is a baseline of love that God shows everyone. The farmer that brutally murders his brother will still receive rain on his crops. If that’s what fellow saints refer to as unconditional love, then God has it. If, instead, they have picked up the popular “God loves you as you are” they should follow it up like Elder Holland did, “don’t plan to stay as you are.” God’s salvific love is predicated on following Him. But his love and hate aren’t based on the petty divisions we often create. “Righteousness is the only protected class for God.”
  22. Sounds like for many people here the parable structure is: Parable with focus on the lost sheep Parable with focus on the lost coin Parable with some focus on the lost son, but with additional focus on the one "left behind" who also needs to be recognized as lost I don't want to discount what has been shared since I think it has merit, but I do want to revisit my questions since I've had some additional thoughts since posting. As with many parables (and as seen in this discussion so far) there's no need to limit it to one strict canonical interpretation -- doing so often robs us of precious insight. What should the missing verse say? Son: Likewise, I say unto you there is joy for the Father above over one sinner that repenteth. I think Jesus omitted the verse. If this were Matthew I could see it being one of the "secret" teaching like he has with the parables of Matthew 13. There Jesus gives several parables, explains one to His apostles and asks, "Do you understand them now?" Suddenly they do! Clearly the additional explanations were given but left out of the record. There doesn't look to be anything like that here and Luke doesn't generally refer to secret teachings. If this were John I would expect an overt statement and a blasphemy challenge. Since this is Luke and he grounds his writings in histories, I think if there were an account that Jesus said the missing verse then Luke would have tried to include it. The missing verse addresses the charge that launched all the parables of the lost: "This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." His answer is that the Father above has joy in the work of reclamation, and Jesus Himself does too! He did not come right out and say it because it was an admission of the charge. In His rivalry with the Pharisees, Jesus would not always directly admit to the wrong He was accused of but would instead require the Pharisees to come right out and say that the good was evil. Since they wouldn't, Jesus was left to continue. I think in this case those who had ears to hear recognized that Jesus enjoyed working with them on their repentance, while those who did not have ears to hear could be content that they were among the 99 sheep.